Journal
BRAIN BEHAVIOR AND IMMUNITY
Volume 23, Issue 6, Pages 803-809Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.bbi.2009.02.021
Keywords
Family assistance; Inflammation; Adolescents; Latinos; European Americans; Ethnicity
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Funding
- NCI NIH HHS [R01 CA116778-03, R01 CA116778] Funding Source: Medline
- NIA NIH HHS [R01 AG026364, P30 AG028748-019004, P30 AG028748] Funding Source: Medline
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To assess the biological impact of time spent helping the family during the teenage years, we examined circulating levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), soluble interleukin-6 receptor (sIL-6r), and C-reactive protein (CRP) in 64 adolescents (M-age = 17.79 years) from Latin American and European backgrounds. Analyses of nightly diary checklists over 14 days showed that the amount of time spent helping the family in a variety of ways, such as cooking, cleaning, and sibling care, was associated with long-term elevations of sIL-6r and CRP, even after controlling for ethnicity, parental education, BMI, substance use, distress, and frequency of daily family assistance 2 years earlier. However, adolescents who derived a greater sense of role fulfillment from helping the family on a daily basis had lower levels of sIL-6r and CRP as compared to their peers who engaged in the same amount of family assistance. Additional work should explore the family context that drives high levels of assistance among adolescents, as well as the variety of ways adolescents may derive meaning from this activity. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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